Trying to create a card game that makes money wasn't something I had thought I could do. To me, it was an unchecked box on my bucket list of things I wanted to do before I die. It would be a personal accomplishment; the joy of knowing I created something that was solely mine and went from conception to completion. When I worked at Victory Point Games, I told everyone I wanted to create a card game...I just never did it.
But I'm a little stubborn. If I were to do this, I would do it right. I'd do it with the right knowledge and the right know-how and at the right time with the right game. In this ever-saturating board/card game world, it would be easy to get lost in the shuffle.
None of these thoughts went through my head when I tried to mix this peanut butter (Combat Stack) with this chocolate (Time Mechanic). I just wanted to know if it was even possible to do this. I had tried to concept MANY games in the past; this was just one of those "experiments". I just loved it because It got my brain juices going; it was an exercise of the mind.
So I took to the whiteboard. As staff at a college, whiteboards are a plenty. I brainstormed about how these things could be put together.
I started with, "Where do cool downs exist in a logical fashion?" and "What kind of battle can you see outcomes where anything can happen?"
Ancient? Does not work...no cool downs.
Western? Well...no real cool down as it's more instant
Fantasy? Spells have cool down, but Magic has the fantasy genre down and there's WAY too many fantasy card games out there.
Fighting game? I started brainstorming, but I hit a wall...maybe later :)
Modern? Not many modern-themed games...not really appealing
Post-Modern? Could work, but battles don't seem grand...it's a lot of little battles.
Far Future? Bingo.
It would be...spaceship against spaceship...kinda like Ender's Game. The Time Mechanic would be one main cannon, nope...
...the time mechanic would be these attachments that did different abilities and each had a cool down!
...but how many attachments? It would be cool if these spaceships had all these attachments on the field and all in various states of cool down; that would be a grand battle.
It sounded cool, but ridiculously overpowered. One of the things I hated was the fact that I played games like Magic and found myself in games where the opponent has an army of monsters and I knew I didn't have anything to answer it in my deck. I didn't want to fall in that overwhelming situation where one person has 1 ability and the other has like 15. Might as well call it quits there cause it was just not fun.
So I restricted it...to 3. For now. Doing so would limit the abilities you could play and forced a player to create a strategy around the attachments (which I renamed "support"). I would imagine a bunch of people in space building these supports (like the Death Star), so it couldn't just be a spaceship...it could be a mothership! And the mothership would have people that constantly build supports to defend or give bonuses to the mothership.
Some supports could have cool downs and some won't have any; they'd be static and provide things like a limited shield or an addition to resources. But the possibilities were endless!
Now what of the Combat Stack? It's a great mechanic, so I decided to start a second type of card known as "Combat" cards. They could be used only for the Combat Stack and grant bonuses to an attack.
But I didn't want to restrict the Combat Stack to just Combat cards. You'd find yourself stuck with no Combat cards in hand a lot of times and utterly defenseless. Plus, dropping a card from your hand meant you had to sacrifice the card, which means you need something to make sure you always have cards in your hand.
I really got into the Star Wars LCG. The thing I loved about it was that the momentum swung wide each way every turn so that you had a chance to come back, even when it seemed like you were at a disadvantage. What made this so was the Draw Phase. It wasn't that you drew 1 card on your turn, you drew to a specific amount. It insured that you had an ability to come back and strategies changed when this happened. Plus it got rid of "top decking"; basically when you have no cards in hand and you're just relying on the top card to get you out of a funk...which was near impossible to do.
So in my game, during your turn, you draw to a specific hand limit (in this case 7).
I also applied this to resources. But instead of resources, it was a "battery" that "recharged" at the beginning of your turn (for this I chose 6)
Now I've made it so that this game eliminated excess board space (limiting the number of supports), prevented top-decking (draw to 7), and virtually eliminated mana flood/mana deficit (battery recharging at the beginning of turn)
I also made it so that you could put ANY card from your hand into the Combat Stack. This meant I started to put bonuses to attack on Support cards. NOW you have decisions to make: Do you play the support to gain its ability, or do you sacrifice the card to the Combat Stack hoping to pull it for its bonus to attack? I represented this by putting this bonus text on a red background.
The third and final type of card was more of a surprise strategy. It was playing cards from the hand directly, which could turn the tide of battle. I called these cards "Ability". This would really give players hard decisions on when to play cards...to the Combat Stack, or as surprise tactics to the game.
So Combat cards represented direct strategy, while Support cards represented planned strategy, and Ability cards represented surprise strategy.
I would give Combat bonuses to Combat cards (obviously), then to some Supports that forced people to make decisions. And some others didn't have bonuses, but the cards were so tactical that if you sacrificed them to the Combat Stack (and sometimes, you had to), it would be a painful decision.
But what if, during an attack, an opponent could somehow sting you? The battle would resolve, but YOU were the one hurt. I added a defensive pull bonus and I put this text on a blue background. If a player pulls their opponent's card (with a defensive pull bonus) when they pull from the Combat Stack, not only does the player's attack miss, but ANOTHER effect happens to the detriment to the attacker. It could be anything from "defender gains a resource" to "damage that would be dealt is reflected back to attacker".
What evolved was Conquest at Kismet (Kismet meaning "fate").
After about 4 months of working on this game, it's coming to fruition. What started as an experiment developed into a full blown card game that breaks the rules, but assembles them into a format that feels fresh and new. I already have created 4 more themed decks and I could easily introduce dual race motherships.
But I started creating my decks by hand. I made several hand-made prototypes and I tested it. As a guy that's worked in Quality Assurance for the video, board, and card game industries, I understand the importance of getting a prototype out and testing it; there's ALWAYS bugs that need to be fixed. I used my students as guinea pigs...they loved it. I taught the game to Pro Magic players...they were blown away. I showed card gamers that are familiar with the diversity...they saw something new and fresh. I made massive changes to the cards themselves...took cards out, added new cards, changed terminology, tweaked numbers. To this day I'm STILL tweaking numbers. I've started numbering my cards and putting versions on them so I can tell the difference between iterations.
It's a lot of hard work. It's reprinting the prototype many many many times. It's making notes all the time. Word files, Excel files. Photoshop files. Illustrator files. Tons of emails. Contracts. Art. Design. Testers. It's watching the players and their reactions. What started as an experiment became a full blown revolution. I believe I've hit the magical trifecta of card games: It's simple to learn/hard to master. It has a very small table footprint/has very few components (2, 50-card decks, 2 mothership cards, resource and damage tokens and a turn order card), AND it's highly strategic. Let's not forget extremely fun to play. When you drop 1 card into the Combat Stack, your opponent has 7, and your opponent pulls YOUR card, you feel like you've taken fate and kicked it in the balls. It's an amazing feeling.
Who knows? It may suck in sales. I've accepted that. I'm just happy that it's going to be published. I'm hoping to make money, but I already have a day job; I'm not expecting it.
What's my hope in blogging this? I suppose my hope is that people get inspired to keep creating. Draw inspiration from everything: Movies, Video Games, TV shows, life.
Never stop creating. Best of luck to all of you!
